Before I go in to telling you why I love Instagram, I’ll explain what its’ all about.

Instagram is a photo-sharing app that is on (at the time of writing this) the iPhone. Mostly this is the case because of its amazing camera (well the iPhone 4 & 4s that is). Instagram recently announced that an Android version of the app is coming, but no firm date as of yet.

<<UPDATE>> Good news Android users – you can now get Instagram for Android too!

Here’s a bit about the rise of Instagram

• Launched on the 6th October 2010
• It was in the no.1 slot on the App Store within 24 hours of launch
• It became the iPhone App of the week
• It holds the record as the quickest App to reach 1 million downloads
• An Instagram photo made the cover of the Wall Street journal
• In early march 2012 the App has over 25 million downloads!

Taking photos on your phone is nothing new & you have been able to add them to social networks such as Facebook & Twitter for some time too. What makes Instagram so good is that it gives you the option to add some interesting effects to your images and does all this within one app.

Instagram has social stuff in there to share the images to all your favorite sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but is in fact a social network in itself. You can build up followers & follow others, search for images that interest you & ‘like’ them, as you would on Facebook.

What Instagram does

• Photo Sharing – You can take pictures within the app or use photos that already exist in your camera roll. You can tag your image to help others see it.
• Photo Manipulation – The ‘smart’ bit about Instagram is that it has a lot of different filters you can use to enhance your pic.
• Social Integration – Easily share your images with your other friends & followers on your social networks at the same time.
• Follow great photographers – Instagram, like any other social network, is based around having friends or followers. You can find other Instagramers in a number of ways, traditional searches or by geographical location. Great for getting inspiration.
• Comment on others photos – People ask questions in the comments, such as “where was this taken?”  Once you get into using Instagram, you will see how laid back people are and how much fun they are having.  It’s currently a very friendly community.
• ‘Like’ photos – Show your ‘like’ for a photo by double tapping the image to give it a ‘like’. The more you get, the more popular that will become, and if you build up enough you could make the ‘popular page’ on Instagram.
• Speed – It’s so quick & easy to use. As it’s on your phone it’s connected directly to the internet, no messing around with memory  cards or cables.

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Why I love this App

I have two (among others) big interests in my life. One is technology (this includes the internet). The other is photography.

These are often linked, but can also be quite different (partly why I like photography). As technology, particularly the internet, takes over a large part of my life (it is my job after all), I don’t always do enough photography to keep that part of my life happy. Enter Instagram.

Instagram allows me to be creative with my photography on a small-scale. I don’t always carry my digital SLR around with me, but I do carry my iPhone everywhere. It allows me to keep my eye trained on looking for a good shot.

When I do get time to get out there with the DSLR (digital SLR camera) I haven’t become rusty with composition, and with the added social aspect of Instagram, I get inspiration from millions of other great images. I also love getting a glimpse into the everyday lives of people who I’ll never meet, who live in completely different cultures than I do, and also like-minded people who live in the same town as me, which I may never have seen any of their photos without this app. Amazing.

Check out Instagram for yourself and

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Ash.

Back in January I was invited by a friend to train with Solihull Town FC. This was a very exciting but nervous event for me as I haven’t played football in about 8 years!

Almost 3 months in, and training is going well. Lots of banter, Messi style trickery, bruises and goals have been scored, and after last week’s training session I was asked by the Manager to sign-up for next season!

Obviously, I said yes. Playing football was part of my life every Sunday morning from the age of 8 until I was 21, and the thought of being back among it all again is very exciting, even being part of training sessions has been a great experience for me. The team is part of the Solihull & District Oakbourne League Football Team and sit in second place and secured promotion a few weeks ago!

The lads have also reached a cup final, which is due to be played in two weeks time at Damson Park, home of Solihull Moors Football Club. A cup final win would be a fitting finale to a great season for Solihull Town and build excitement and optimism for the new season.

If you want to keep up to date with progress next season and how the cup final turns out visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/solihulltownfootballclub

In the meantime I’ll be digging out my old boots and giving them an MOT before the start of the new season!

Simon.

Although we’re always showing off the large, custom-build exhibition stands we often produce, we thought it would be a good idea to show how we can create graphics for a small-scale shell scheme stand too.

Exhibition stand design, construction and management has always been one of the things Cloud 9 do best and we have loads of experience of all types of exhibition and all sizes and shapes of stand.

We can take on the complete project for you, from negotiating the best stand position to guarantee you excellent footfall, to day-to-day management once the show is open. We’ve even been known to serve the refreshments when things get busy. And it’s always busy as we know exactly how to design and produce stand-out graphics that will draw in the crowds.

It’s not just about being at a trade show, it’s that split second you have to convince someone to step on to your stand and not someone else’s – that is where Cloud 9’s expertise comes into its own. If you don’t want the full management service from us, we can work with you however you wish – maybe you just want some stunning graphic panels.

If you are thinking of exhibiting in the near future, let us come and show you our portfolio of successful stands.

Okay – The more you know us here at Cloud 9, the more you will know how much I (Mike) love all things surf & skate.

Penny Skateboards recently ran a neat contest for filmmakers to create a promo video for them.

Although I started writing this blog entry to highlight the growing trend towards shooting directly into sunlight – to get lovely summer lens flares, I then started to think more about how different niche brands (such as those in the surf/snow/skate industry), are using video as a way of virally attracting more followers.

Although it could sound like a cheap attempt to get a free video, they’re not selling flanges to petroleum companies, so their kind of product (skateboards = fun) means that there are loads of young filmakers out there that just waiting for a subject to create great movies. Best of all, it generates interest within their target market. The winning entry has, to date had over 50K views. Try getting that kind of reaction to a flange video!

If you need a flange video give us a call (as long as it’s a paid project – not a contest)

Mike

Got something for a cheeky little bike builder?
Tell us more by commenting below…

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It’s a year of celebrations this year at C9 with an engagement and a few big birthdays – I won’t mention who! A great excuse for cakes and bubbly…………

You could argue third party applications such as TwitPic and YFrog allowed us to add images to our profiles but it was never really as simple as uploading directly from your Twitter account and the images never appeared as saved galleries on your profile.

How?

Twitter has now added a new image gallery feature which loads a strip of thumbnails of your recently uploaded pictures into the sidebar. When you view a person’s homepage directly, you get a larger image. When you view a profile by clicking on a person in your stream, you get a smaller set. Both allow you to click and enlarge the photos in a very similar way to Facebook!

A typical Twitter slider view

Why?

So why have Twitter added this feature?

Adding new features like this keeps people on the site longer and adds interest to the general text based tweets. It also means people won’t miss images that are uploaded by people they follow as they would usually be buried under a stream of updates as they are a constant feature on a profile.

So?

More interestingly for us at Cloud 9 it allows us to market ourselves and our clients in a better way on Twitter that we could only before do using Facebook. We can brand ourselves in a better fashion and ‘tweet’ with images rather than text and images. As well as text, tweets can ‘retweeted’ to allow them maximum interest. It may seem like double the work but we look at it being double the exposure to a normally out of reach audience.

We’re excited about this new feature and will be sure to be using it! Keep an eye on what we’re doing on https://twitter.com/c9dd or https://www.facebook.com/cloud9digitaldesign